mcpbeat

Pinecone

orchestra-research/pinecone

Managed vector database for production AI applications. Fully managed, auto-scaling, with hybrid search (dense + sparse), metadata filtering, and namespaces. Low latency (<100ms p95). Use for production RAG, recommendation systems, or semantic search at scale. Best for serverless, managed infrastructure.

3k tokens
context cost
the whole folder, loaded on every use
2
files
instructions only
1
copies elsewhere
how many repositories repackaged it
11362
stars on the repo
on the repository, not the skill itself

Install

one command, takes just this skill from the repository
npx skills add https://github.com/Orchestra-Research/AI-Research-SKILLs --skill pinecone

The instruction itself

20 sections, as written by the author

Pinecone - Managed Vector Database

The vector database for production AI applications.

When to use Pinecone

Use when:

  • Need managed, serverless vector database
  • Production RAG applications
  • Auto-scaling required
  • Low latency critical (<100ms)
  • Don't want to manage infrastructure
  • Need hybrid search (dense + sparse vectors)

Metrics:

  • Fully managed SaaS
  • Auto-scales to billions of vectors
  • p95 latency <100ms
  • 99.9% uptime SLA

Use alternatives instead:

  • Chroma: Self-hosted, open-source
  • FAISS: Offline, pure similarity search
  • Weaviate: Self-hosted with more features

Quick start

Installation

pip install pinecone-client

Basic usage

from pinecone import Pinecone, ServerlessSpec

# Initialize
pc = Pinecone(api_key="your-api-key")

# Create index
pc.create_index(
    name="my-index",
    dimension=1536,  # Must match embedding dimension
    metric="cosine",  # or "euclidean", "dotproduct"
    spec=ServerlessSpec(cloud="aws", region="us-east-1")
)

# Connect to index
index = pc.Index("my-index")

# Upsert vectors
index.upsert(vectors=[
    {"id": "vec1", "values": [0.1, 0.2, ...], "metadata": {"category": "A"}},
    {"id": "vec2", "values": [0.3, 0.4, ...], "metadata": {"category": "B"}}
])

# Query
results = index.query(
    vector=[0.1, 0.2, ...],
    top_k=5,
    include_metadata=True
)

print(results["matches"])

Core operations

Create index

# Serverless (recommended)
pc.create_index(
    name="my-index",
    dimension=1536,
    metric="cosine",
    spec=ServerlessSpec(
        cloud="aws",         # or "gcp", "azure"
        region="us-east-1"
    )
)

# Pod-based (for consistent performance)
from pinecone import PodSpec

pc.create_index(
    name="my-index",
    dimension=1536,
    metric="cosine",
    spec=PodSpec(
        environment="us-east1-gcp",
        pod_type="p1.x1"
    )
)

Upsert vectors

# Single upsert
index.upsert(vectors=[
    {
        "id": "doc1",
        "values": [0.1, 0.2, ...],  # 1536 dimensions
        "metadata": {
            "text": "Document content",
            "category": "tutorial",
            "timestamp": "2025-01-01"
        }
    }
])

# Batch upsert (recommended)
vectors = [
    {"id": f"vec{i}", "values": embedding, "metadata": metadata}
    for i, (embedding, metadata) in enumerate(zip(embeddings, metadatas))
]

index.upsert(vectors=vectors, batch_size=100)

Query vectors

# Basic query
results = index.query(
    vector=[0.1, 0.2, ...],
    top_k=10,
    include_metadata=True,
    include_values=False
)

# With metadata filtering
results = index.query(
    vector=[0.1, 0.2, ...],
    top_k=5,
    filter={"category": {"$eq": "tutorial"}}
)

# Namespace query
results = index.query(
    vector=[0.1, 0.2, ...],
    top_k=5,
    namespace="production"
)

# Access results
for match in results["matches"]:
    print(f"ID: {match['id']}")
    print(f"Score: {match['score']}")
    print(f"Metadata: {match['metadata']}")

Metadata filtering

# Exact match
filter = {"category": "tutorial"}

# Comparison
filter = {"price": {"$gte": 100}}  # $gt, $gte, $lt, $lte, $ne

# Logical operators
filter = {
    "$and": [
        {"category": "tutorial"},
        {"difficulty": {"$lte": 3}}
    ]
}  # Also: $or

# In operator
filter = {"tags": {"$in": ["python", "ml"]}}

Namespaces

# Partition data by namespace
index.upsert(
    vectors=[{"id": "vec1", "values": [...]}],
    namespace="user-123"
)

# Query specific namespace
results = index.query(
    vector=[...],
    namespace="user-123",
    top_k=5
)

# List namespaces
stats = index.describe_index_stats()
print(stats['namespaces'])

Hybrid search (dense + sparse)

# Upsert with sparse vectors
index.upsert(vectors=[
    {
        "id": "doc1",
        "values": [0.1, 0.2, ...],  # Dense vector
        "sparse_values": {
            "indices": [10, 45, 123],  # Token IDs
            "values": [0.5, 0.3, 0.8]   # TF-IDF scores
        },
        "metadata": {"text": "..."}
    }
])

# Hybrid query
results = index.query(
    vector=[0.1, 0.2, ...],
    sparse_vector={
        "indices": [10, 45],
        "values": [0.5, 0.3]
    },
    top_k=5,
    alpha=0.5  # 0=sparse, 1=dense, 0.5=hybrid
)

LangChain integration

from langchain_pinecone import PineconeVectorStore
from langchain_openai import OpenAIEmbeddings

# Create vector store
vectorstore = PineconeVectorStore.from_documents(
    documents=docs,
    embedding=OpenAIEmbeddings(),
    index_name="my-index"
)

# Query
results = vectorstore.similarity_search("query", k=5)

# With metadata filter
results = vectorstore.similarity_search(
    "query",
    k=5,
    filter={"category": "tutorial"}
)

# As retriever
retriever = vectorstore.as_retriever(search_kwargs={"k": 10})

LlamaIndex integration

from llama_index.vector_stores.pinecone import PineconeVectorStore

# Connect to Pinecone
pc = Pinecone(api_key="your-key")
pinecone_index = pc.Index("my-index")

# Create vector store
vector_store = PineconeVectorStore(pinecone_index=pinecone_index)

# Use in LlamaIndex
from llama_index.core import StorageContext, VectorStoreIndex

storage_context = StorageContext.from_defaults(vector_store=vector_store)
index = VectorStoreIndex.from_documents(documents, storage_context=storage_context)

Index management

# List indices
indexes = pc.list_indexes()

# Describe index
index_info = pc.describe_index("my-index")
print(index_info)

# Get index stats
stats = index.describe_index_stats()
print(f"Total vectors: {stats['total_vector_count']}")
print(f"Namespaces: {stats['namespaces']}")

# Delete index
pc.delete_index("my-index")

Delete vectors

# Delete by ID
index.delete(ids=["vec1", "vec2"])

# Delete by filter
index.delete(filter={"category": "old"})

# Delete all in namespace
index.delete(delete_all=True, namespace="test")

# Delete entire index
index.delete(delete_all=True)

Best practices

  • Use serverless - Auto-scaling, cost-effective
  • Batch upserts - More efficient (100-200 per batch)
  • Add metadata - Enable filtering
  • Use namespaces - Isolate data by user/tenant
  • Monitor usage - Check Pinecone dashboard
  • Optimize filters - Index frequently filtered fields
  • Test with free tier - 1 index, 100K vectors free
  • Use hybrid search - Better quality
  • Set appropriate dimensions - Match embedding model

10. Regular backups - Export important data

Performance

| Operation | Latency | Notes |

|-----------|---------|-------|

| Upsert | ~50-100ms | Per batch |

| Query (p50) | ~50ms | Depends on index size |

| Query (p95) | ~100ms | SLA target |

| Metadata filter | ~+10-20ms | Additional overhead |

Pricing (as of 2025)

Serverless:

  • $0.096 per million read units
  • $0.06 per million write units
  • $0.06 per GB storage/month

Free tier:

  • 1 serverless index
  • 100K vectors (1536 dimensions)
  • Great for prototyping

Resources

  • Website: https://www.pinecone.io
  • Docs: https://docs.pinecone.io
  • Console: https://app.pinecone.io
  • Pricing: https://www.pinecone.io/pricing

Repackaged in 1 other repositories

same content, different owner
Microck/ordinary-claude-skills open on GitHub →

How to use it

Copy the folder

Take orchestra-research/pinecone from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.

Check the name does not clash

The agent identifies a skill by the name field in its header. Two skills with the same name cannot sit side by side — one of them will be ignored.

Install what it needs

The instructions reference pip. Without those the skill loads but fails at the first command.